I ask the empty kitchen,
If it would miss nani teetering across the hall to get more sweets,
As her hands would slowly fall numb against her side,
I ask if it would miss having her whipping up new things in quiet desolation.
I pick up the photo frames she has left behind,
My mother is a startling image of her.
The borders carry a story of a woman who lived her life as a battlefield, with a quiet end an undeclared victor.
I remember how I would wipe the dust off the old crockery as she would hand me a glass of water that she could not drink anymore.
I ask the empty rooms and an emptier part of me
Why did I never visit enough
I ask the empty kitchen if I deserved any of the love that wafted off the stove during the day
And the lullabies whispered into the night.
But it does not respond.
I lock up the apartment- and leave, hoping that as I reach home, I would know what to do with the boxes she left behind.
There are sarees that she wore so frequently the fabrics threaten to thin out and break apart.
And ones that she never wore.
I hang onto the newness of a world where someone else will eventually have her phone number
With no idea about the flurry of calls to the emergency room it had once endured.
I ask myself in a room full of people
If the empty kitchen thinks of her sometimes,
Or that it would ever respond to someone
Who did not visit enough
Or called daily
As it listened to her weep out of pain
Yet still find courage to limp into the kitchen
At the thought that I will come home again.